


i'll keep your love under lock and key

by benwvatt



Category: The Resident (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:29:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 12,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28307535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benwvatt/pseuds/benwvatt
Summary: Chapter 10: In which Nic and Conrad discuss their future.“We’d make cute babies, y’know.”“Ugh, they’d be adorable. Good with stethoscopes, too.”A series of one-shots about Conrad and Nic! Requests are welcome.
Relationships: Conrad Hawkins/Nicolette Nevin
Comments: 65
Kudos: 95





	1. five drinks

“You’re my favorite,” she murmurs, sing-songy. Nic’s tracing the arc of his cheekbone with her pointer finger, one arm over another at the bar.

“You’re very drunk,” Conrad reminds her. He’s smiling because she is. Her joy is kind of contagious, he already knows.

“Don’t care!” She puts her arms around his neck, inhaling his aftershave. Five-drink Nic is very huggy, like a koala on an overexcited tourist. Five-drink Nic hugs the way that grandmothers do after presenting you with oatmeal-raisin cookies.

“Aaand I’m taking you home.” He reaches for her hand, dragging her somewhat successfully out of her seat.

“I got the good one!” She follows him out, flushed from the lights at the bar and the alcohol in her system. Her face is rosy, and it’d be adorable if it weren’t 2 AM. “The good one! He might ask me out!”

“Think I might go a little further than that,” Conrad says, shrugging as he pays their bill. “Like, to the altar, perhaps?”

“He married me?” Five-drink Nic is a hilarious and bumbling mess. Conrad’s not quite sure if he’s ever had a confused hug before, but he’s having one now. He can smell her shampoo, like Pantene’s put their own lemon-y twist on the scent of a lilac.

“I _did_ marry you.” He holds the door for her and they walk out to the parking lot. “Several months ago, in fact. It was very nice. Your dad cried. My dad gave a very stern-sounding speech layered with hidden childhood nostalgia.”

“Did I cry?”

“We both did. It was beautiful! And emotional!”

“Okay then,” Nic says, opening the car door. “I believe you.” She falls asleep on his shoulder as he drives them home, and even if she’s snoring above the traffic noises, Conrad knows he got a good one, too.

“G’night,” she whispers, tucking herself into bed next to him. “Thank you for marrying me.” Five-drink Nic is a blessing.

“You’re welcome.” He kisses her cheek, still warm from blushing. “Thank you for marrying me, too.”


	2. mistletoe and tinsel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He looks around at the floor, littered with wrapping paper scraps. It can wait until tomorrow. For tonight, he has Christmas decorations and his wife by his side.

“We look ridiculous,” Nic announces to nobody in particular, sipping her eggnog out of a pink coffee mug. “And you put too much brandy in these.”

She and Conrad are surrounded by piles of tangled wrapping paper and ribbon, the aftermath of a holiday well spent. They’re sitting by the fireplace.

“Not an accident,” Conrad murmurs. “Besides, we were out of wine glasses! They’re all in the dishwasher after the Christmas party.” They’d had everyone from the hospital over to their place to watch movies and play White Elephant. Nic won a mini waffle maker and cheered; Conrad had gotten a thermometer and sighed. It was a perfectly practical gift, but a dull one.

Nic sips her drink on the sofa, the fire warm at her feet. “It was really nice, though. We got to meet Devon’s new girlfriend.”

“Right. Caitlin, was it?”

“Yeah, she introduced herself as Katie. I just remember how nice she was. I mean, she brought us a housewarming gift. She hadn’t even met us yet!”

“Oh, thank goodness you liked her too. Devon told me he was nervous about bringing her.”

“Why? She was great! She sided with me when it came to the 'is Die Hard a Christmas movie' argument,” Nic says.

“Uh, Die Hard is absolutely not a Christmas movie. It’s about terrorism. It includes a horrifying montage of a man walking barefoot over a broken plate-glass window. How is that remotely holiday-related?”

Nic shakes her head. “It occurs _at_ Christmas. It involves a Christmas _party._ All the side characters are celebrating the holidays. It even snows!”

“Snow does not make something a Christmas film. Plenty of movies have snow,” Conrad argues. “We could do this all night.”

“We could,” Nic shrugs, curling into his side. He’s so warm, she’s never leaving the sofa. Besides, the longer she stays there, the longer she can procrastinate cleaning up the confetti and ribbon. “Do you think Devon and Katie are gonna get married?”

“You think every relationship’s going to end in marriage. Hopeless romantic.” Conrad presses a kiss to her forehead, then pauses. “Are you just looking for more couples to double date?”

“Jess and Irving are busy with their baby!”

“So that’s a yes.” Conrad chuckles. “We’ll see. Devon said they’ve only been dating for three months, so it’s early. I hope this one sticks, though.”

“How’d they meet?”

“Blind date at a restaurant, actually. She’s a friend of Devon’s brother.”

“That’s so cute!” Nic gushes. “Not as cute as an exam room during a pericardiocentesis, though.”

“Yeah, the medical procedure was just to charm you. It was some of my best work,” Conrad says. He looks around at the floor, littered with wrapping paper scraps. It can wait until tomorrow. For tonight, he has Christmas decorations and his wife by his side.

She nods, pulling him into a hug. It’s freezing in their living room. “You’re very good at flirting, I’ll have you know. It was romantic. Crazy and odd and potentially fatal, but still romantic.”

“That’s just how I operate!”

“Well, thank goodness for that.” Nic sips her eggnog, watching the flames crackle in the fireplace. “Maybe we should do this party every year.”

“We should! Maybe Irving and Jess can host next time. Or Devon and Katie, if they’re still together.”

“Listen, we need to keep them together. I need more female friends! Mina is great, but she can be a little…”

“Intense?”

“Yes. That’s it. Intense. Mina loves spending time alone, traveling or sewing, and I need someone to watch Die Hard with!” Nic chuckles, seeing the expression on Conrad’s face. “I know you secretly hate it.”

“It’s just such a bad movie! It’s terrible and gory and it has shock for shock’s value! Die Hard has 4 sequels, it just doesn’t _end_!”

“I know, honey.” She leans against his weight. “I know. You pretend to like Die Hard the same way that I pretend I enjoy Cards Against Humanity.”

“Okay, I’m with you on that. Sometimes people make these jokes they think are hilarious, but they’re really not, and then you’re just praising them for making these absurd or crude comments. So much fake laughter.”

“Never again,” Nic groans, thinking of her college days. “It’s very nice to have married someone with the same taste in card games and board games as me. Even if you hate Die Hard.”

“Whatever.” He raises an eyebrow at her. “Your favorite ‘Christmas movie’ takes place in a crumbling skyscraper. There’s no holiday cheer! The plot isn’t even holiday-centric.”

“Not every Christmas movie needs to be heartwarming, you big softie.” She kisses him.


	3. new year's day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s 3 AM on New Year’s Day, and Nic had managed a brief kiss with Conrad before baby Eleanor started crying again. She’s been teething this entire week, which basically means _I will wage war upon the precious thing you call silence, just you wait!_

“You look like an absolute nightmare,” Nic murmurs, swiping a thumb across the bags beneath her husband’s eyes, as if that’ll make them _poof_ and disappear.

“Thanks, honey, I love you too,” he deadpans. Conrad runs a hand through his hair, matted and bed-tossed. “What happened to ‘I like you with your walls down’ and all that romantic nonsense?”

“I’m so sleep-deprived,” she groans, “I _do_ like you when you’re messy and broken-down and a scruffy, exhausted dad, but-” she pauses and yawns, “I wanna take a shower! Not that I don’t love Ellie, but it turns out that this scruffy, exhausted mom could use a break once in a while.”

It’s 3 AM on New Year’s Day, and Nic had managed a brief kiss with Conrad before baby Eleanor started crying again. She’s been teething this entire week, which basically means _I will wage war upon the precious thing you call silence, just you wait!_ Nic shoved her shirt into the baby’s crib sometime around 2, thinking it’d soothe her because the fabric smelled like her skin.

It worked, sort of?

Ellie’s been crying less this past hour, but she still refuses to sleep. Nic had mumbled “ugh, the dresser’s too far” as she shot an aimless look at her bedroom door, so she was sitting in the nursery in a bra and an old jacket from college.

“I know, I know, I could use a shower too,” Conrad says. “Shh, I think she’s finally falling asleep.” He leans an arm over the crib to watch his daughter breathe, her eyes shut. How can a person breathe so cutely? It’s just oxygen and lungs and hard science, he knows, but that still doesn’t explain the little pangs of his chest whenever Ellie does something new. Or something ordinary, or something good. Anything, honestly, can pull at his heartstrings when it comes from her.

Last week she’d wrapped her whole hand around his ring finger, something she’d been doing for a while, and still he felt like the proudest person on the globe.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, baby,” Nic whispers. She pulls the blanket up an inch so it covers Ellie’s stomach, not daring to do anything else. Honestly, this baby could hear a pin drop and jolt awake. “I hate to sound disgusting, but I think I have spit-up in my hair and I’ve been waiting for hours to wash it out.”

“I never thought I’d be so happy to watch someone sleep,” Conrad murmurs, making sure the baby monitor’s set up before he turns to leave.

“Remember the night of December 3rd? Seven whole hours. She could enter the sleeping olympics.”

“I know, she can be amazing like that. Finally, she’s resting. Want to shower together?”

Nic turns on the water and waits for it to warm as Conrad goes to the dresser and gets her a new t-shirt. “You are my favorite person,” she says, seeing he’d remembered what she forgot. At this point, the thought of leaving the shower to pad across their room feels impossible. Her feet are so sore. “The light of my life, my one and only, my personal hero-”

“Enough with the superlatives,” he brushes the compliments off with a shrug, stepping into the water as well. “I did a simple thing, you would’ve done it too.”

“Maybe,” Nic says, “or I might’ve just stayed here. Do you know how nice it is to not have baby vomit in my hair?”

“I’m gonna guess marvelous, based on your recent and enthusiastic words.”

Nic nods, smiles. She reaches for the shampoo and scrubs a little more through her wet hair, watching the soap bubbles wash away. “Remember the first shower we took after the baby was born?”

“I remember Mina came over to babysit and we just _bolted_ over here, so desperate to change out of our clothes that we nearly started fighting over who got to take a shower first.” Conrad leans in to kiss her. “Happy new year again.”

“Any excuse to kiss me, hmm?”

“I mean, I don’t think I need an excuse, but if you want me to seek approval every time, I guess New Year’s, mistletoe, and spin the bottle will be the only times I get to kiss you.” Conrad shrugs. “Such a shame. We’re gonna have to buy mistletoe in bulk.”

“We can be those weird people who celebrate Christmas 24/7.” Nic giggles, wrapping her arms around him. “We’ll deck the halls with mistletoe under every doorway.”

“Ellie can grow up with the holiday-obsessed parents who hang mistletoe all over the place, huh?”

Nic laughs. “We’ll embarrass her to death. The Christmas tree and lights will be set up year-round, we’ll _only_ bake Santa cookies instead of the chocolate-chip ones like regular parents do-”

“I mean, it fits! Christmas is your favorite holiday, and mine too.” Conrad gasps. “We can wrap all her birthday gifts in festive wrapping paper. And we’ll hide other presents in her stocking, hung on the mantle.”

“Even if she was born in June?”

“Don’t care. The Hawkins-Nevin clan goes all-in, all the time. Go big or go home.”

“I married a complete dork,” Nic says. She leans in to kiss him again. “No mistletoe required?”

“Nah, not this time. It’s New Year’s, you get a free pass to kiss me whenever you want.”

“Wherever I want, too?” she raises an eyebrow.

They end up naked, laughing, flushed, a comforter wrapped around their shoulders as they lie back and savor the quiet. The fireworks in Atlanta ended a couple hours ago, and the view from their bedroom window is dark. They can only see the shadows of trees against the sky.

“You,” Conrad says, still catching his breath, “babe, you’re incredible.”

“It took you this long to notice?”

He kisses her bare shoulder, a few inches from a hickey he’d left a handful of minutes ago. “I just like reusing the compliments I’ve already given you in the past. They’re true, anyhow.”

“People these days, no creativity,” she jokes, rolling onto her side to face him. “I mean, come up with something original!”

“Maybe I’ve just run out of good words to describe you with.” Conrad rests his head on his hand, then kisses her forehead. “Used up all my good compliments while I was busy falling in love with you.”

Nic laughs. “Always so romantic, aren’t you? I love you.”

"I love you too."


	4. boy next door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"She doesn’t think of Conrad as her childhood best friend because she’s right in the middle of her childhood, chasing down the ice-cream truck and making origami cranes out of old math homework."_
> 
> best friends and next door neighbors AU starring conrad and nic, age eleven (because why not?)

You will miss the light when the sun goes to sleep, Nic tells herself. She says it all the time, only in her head. The grass is always greener on the other side. Hindsight is 20/20. Your perception of the world is skewed, and crooked, and maybe a little too rosy, and you will miss the sun when the darkness shows up and blindfolds you. So remember the good times, and hold onto the memories. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll hold onto you, too.

* * *

She doesn’t think of Conrad as her childhood best friend because she’s right in the middle of her childhood, chasing down the ice-cream truck and making origami cranes out of old math homework. He says it’s not responsible to do the latter, bringing up that _one_ time Mrs. Carlton offered two extra grade points to anyone who could give her ten (10) pop quizzes from the fall semester. Nic always does the same thing, knocking her shoulder against his and asking if he’ll ever let her live that down (getting a ninety-six to Conrad’s ninety-eight was annoying enough, especially since her mom was going through a must-laminate-everything-the-kids-do-at-school phase.)

Conrad isn’t just a friend, anyways. He’s her secret-keeper, he’s like a brother, he’s the one person she’d want to take to an abandoned island, in the event she’d ever have to choose. Conrad always hates that question whenever anyone asks it. What, like we’re ignoring the fact that most islands have been colonized and overtaken, and therefore wouldn’t be abandoned in the first place?

Conrad only slows to a stop after five minutes of ranting, realizing he’s gotten carried away, and Nic tells him she loves his dedication. She leans forward, perches her head on her hands, and asks him to tell her more about international politics. She’s being serious, she always insists, so he doesn’t stay all shy.

When she sees him standing in her (their) house that very first night, eleven years old and shivering, Conrad Hawkins is a work in progress. His mother’s died, and his father’s as good as gone with overnight shifts filling up his day. So Conrad and Nic become each other’s safety. She comes home to him after tutoring sessions and violin lessons. He wakes her up when she can’t hear her alarm through the dense, noisy dreams she’s always having. Nic is too deep a sleeper for any digital clock, and Conrad always remembers to jostle her awake at five minutes to seven.

Conrad saves a seat for Nic on the school bus, and he sometimes falls asleep with his head on her shoulder because he’d stayed up the night before browsing Wikipedia on the family computer. Most days, he chats with her all the way home about conspiracy theories hidden in the corners of the internet like alien sightings in New Mexico, and Nic counters with gossip about the school counselor or a rumor on the mystery meat in the cafeteria. When a bee flies in through the window that obnoxious Ciera opened without permission, Conrad catches it in his hands and sets it free, and Nic calls him a hero. He laughs all the way home, the way she praises him.

* * *

Nic likes to run, and she thinks she’s fast even if she isn’t. She ignores the potholes on the road and steps over all the cracks in the sidewalk, wearing her favorite pants with the racing stripes down one side, feeling the wind in her hair. And she ignores the dogs barking in all the neighbors’ yards, and the scuffs on her shoes that won’t go away, and that scab on her knee from tripping over her own feet. Sometimes Conrad goes with her, always dressed in white because he says it absorbs the least sunlight. (Jessie calls him a nerd behind his back.)

It’s obnoxious how Conrad’s correct, and even more so how he miraculously gets the grass stains out of his clothes. He may be a klutz, a good three inches taller than Nic, but then he goes home and studies how to remove blemishes from cotton. So the laundry room might smell like white vinegar and organic detergent, but Conrad’s clothes are always crisp and white again when he goes on another run with Nic. It's very nerdy of him, and yet there's a method to his madness.

“You’re such a geek,” she reminds him with a nudge to his shoulder.

“Shut up!”

Nic makes a playlist for running, and Conrad takes all the music recommendations she gives him. Everything is always peaceful when they’re side by side. They can’t even hear the dogs barking as they rush past on lap number three. That year, Conrad actually gets a B in gym instead of the usual, devastating C. His father laminates the report card and puts it on the refrigerator, telling Nic she’s helped Conrad do the impossible.

Living next door to your best friend is kind of like having a sleepover for seven years. Nic knows the day that Conrad’s mom died, and she tries her hardest to cheer him up every time they roll around. The pain ebbs and flows, but there are always blankets and movies just waiting to brush away the fear.

Conrad and Nic laugh at all the same jokes. They’re the type to talk all throughout the film, pointing out cameos and plot inconsistencies, and they perch a bowl of popcorn on the middle couch cushion so that Jessie can share too. They even have matching pajamas ( _only_ because they were buy one, get one free, they both insist) and, when the movie ends, they bid each other goodnight and Conrad sleeps over in the guest room. The connecting door in the wall is always there, though, just big enough to fit a person.

They used to pass notes through it, and there was the time Conrad was convinced he could learn morse code via flashlight, but now Nic just crawls through and talks with Conrad for hours. It’s fun to stay up whispering about everything they can think of: foreign languages and the lottery and superpowers and those cotton-candy-blue taffy candies they can’t find at the grocery store, no matter how hard they look.

Nic tells Conrad about wanting to be a nurse, even if her dad doesn’t want her to try, and she talks about her love for writing. She admits she once spent three months’ allowance on new notebooks and mechanical pencils, but Conrad says she has the best handwriting he's ever seen. She should try writing for the school newspaper if she wants to give it a try. He quizzes her on spelling words until two in the morning, and they only stop because Conrad doesn’t know how to use ‘blandishment’ in a sentence.

The nights always end the same, with lots of hugs and secret-sharing, and Conrad and Nic always come up with at least two or three new inside jokes by the time they stop talking. It feels a little too good to be true, being best friends and living one bedroom across from each other. It feels meant to be, Conrad likes to say.

They have contests on who can whisper the quietest, or tiptoe downstairs the fastest, or write the smallest. They fall asleep clutching slivers of pencil lead, trying to squeeze ‘astronaut’ or ‘caterpillar’ or ‘grandiose’ onto the corner of the memo pad they found in the kitchen drawer.

* * *

Nic sees the things that light cannot catch: slivers of scratched glass through her best friend’s telescope much less perfect than the rest, the splinters along the side of her dad’s workbench that’ve made their way into rough, calloused skin that used to feel like gnarled armor. She asks the moon to stick around to no avail, and she wears rain boots during droughts because fitting in isn’t fun. And she is electric, the way she smiles; she is glowy, in all the strangest ways.

Nic aces the math test she stayed up studying for, scribbling on the bathroom mirror. She writes equations over and over in the shade of Expo marker she least likes. Conrad complains it’ll stain and asks why she won’t just get a whiteboard, so Nic wipes the smudgy x’s and y’s away with her thumb while sticking her tongue out at him. Just before they leave, some mornings, she’ll scribble messages for him on the mirror in that familiar bottle green hue. He’ll read them when he gets home. (Conrad still complains that it’ll stain, but she notices he’s a lot less eager to wipe those away.)

Nic likes math the least, she tells Conrad on the bus ride home, and he scoffs and jokingly clutches their geometry textbook to his chest as she does so. He wonders how anyone could dislike the variables and rules, the secrets hidden on the other side of the page. He asks her practice questions all the way home, even if they’ve just finished their test.

_Hey, Nic, if there’s one train heading north at 450 miles per hour, and another going east 290 miles an hour, and if it’s been forty-five minutes but if the first train has been going ten miles slower than usual for the past quarter of an hour, and if they both halt at exactly at the same time, how far apart are they?_

Hey, Conrad, she says, trains wouldn’t actually work that way in real life, you know. The speed isn’t constant, and there are outside variables. What if one train weights more than another? What if one of the train conductors falls asleep?

She likes making fun of his made-up problems, appreciating their genius all the while. Then Nic scribbles onto the back of her old math quiz (“I told you they’d come in handy!” he says), and says _“three hundred ninety-nine point four hundred two miles,”_ all proud. Conrad checks her math, laughing all the way home. 

He likes her handwriting, and her mechanical pencils, and the way she writes the number nine all pretty. He likes her too much to say anything about it.

* * *

The first time Conrad sees Nic in a dress, it’s eleven o’clock at night.

It’s the night before the school play, The Wizard of Oz, and she’s supposed to play one of the poppies in the flower field that sings everyone to sleep. Nic pulls Conrad into the backyard after dark, nervous about not knowing the dance well enough; she’s wearing the white cotton sundress her dad got her at Goodwill and she’s a little too mad at herself for not attending rehearsal because of spelling bee practice. He jokingly judges her the way he would an Olympic gymnast, holding his arms up and yelling ‘ten out of ten!’ as he bites his lip trying not to laugh. They spin and spin until neither of them can see straight, and he holds her hand in the dark as they run back to the house.

Their legs tangle in the grass and Conrad runs straight through a spiderweb on his way back home, but it’s all okay.

Nic puts both her hands on the dryer, hops on as Conrad rolls his eyes, and he talks her ear off about how to get grass stains out of white cotton.

She falls asleep with the whir of the dryer in the background. Conrad’s sleeping over tonight, his empty house too unbearable to face, and Nic hears a knock at the wall before Conrad opens the secret door.

“You awake?”

“For you? Always.”

“Thank goodness. So I was reading about the history of the modern boat, and you won’t believe this-”

“Go on.” She smiles, leans in, holds him close until she can smell the fabric softener on his pajamas. “What’d you learn this time?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> because we don't get enough AUs in this fandom and !!! Can you imagine conrad and nic being adorable best friends and telling each other everything?
> 
> Also, conrad being obsessed with wikipedia trivia is my personal headcanon because tiny 11-year-old conrad would be such a dork
> 
> Let me know what you thought! I'm thinking about doing more AUs in the future too


	5. melatonin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sometimes it’s nice to have people you can send your adoration to; even nicer if they send it back undamaged and wrapped in a chapstick kiss._
> 
> In which Conrad ponders sleep and he misses his wife.

Conrad can be a clumsy person sometimes. He’s multitasking and wired and hard to control, always trying to work a little harder. He has a soul afire, and an insulated mind. He moves between shades of red, melodramatic one moment and sallow the next. He’s flickery, the way he walks, all uneven strides and side-stepping cracks in the sidewalk, counting floor tiles and skirting past flowers growing out of the cement. And the way his hands move when he talks, you’d think he was electrified.

Conrad thinks he is hard to want. He can’t do mental math very well. He doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle, although he really should by now. His dad never spent the time teaching him how.

He doesn’t like thinking about it for too long. The thought’s easy to brush off, anyhow.

He can come off as brash and close-minded, ducking strangers’ gazes the way he does. He has a hard time concentrating sometimes. Why would you ever concentrate if you had ten things to do and you could flip between them like television channels, comedy then drama then horror movie then documentary? Why would you ever want to stay in one place?

He takes his time with Nic, at least. He’s getting better at taking a deep breath and settling on a single channel, picking one open tab instead of fifty that jam the signal and slow the network. It’s therapy and medication and self-reflection even when it feels useless or pitiable. The thing about therapy, Nic says, is that it might not feel good right now, but it’ll pay off. You don’t get any work done with fifty open tabs. You just split your focus.

Conrad thinks about _one open tab_ while he’s getting ready for work, making sure he’s got his keys and his phone. His glance flicks over Nic, and he kisses her forehead out of affection first and habit second. He does it a lot. These days, it’s usually when she’s falling asleep and he’s getting out of bed. With this new hospital schedule, he’s on nights and she’s assigned to days. Her mere presence in the bed, asleep, is about as much quality time as he can get.

“Bye,” she drawls, turning over in the bed to face him. “Love you.”

“Get some sleep, okay?”

“Mm, I’ll try.” Her voice fades as she talks.

“I love you.” And even if it’s difficult, Conrad drags himself out the door. It’s nearing midnight and he’s about to receive his regular dose of hospital lights, ever-bright, Vegas-like. No matter what time it is, they’re always on. So odd, to go from a blackout-curtain bedroom to that.

Oh, he hopes Nic can get some sleep.

She’s been having trouble lately, probably just a stress thing, but she’s taking melatonin for it. Nic says it tastes like copper and lemons, bitterish, but Conrad’s taken it before and he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Melatonin has a childhood cough medicine sting.

He misses the days when he used to fall asleep with her.

It occurs to Conrad that falling asleep alone might be the reason behind Nic’s inability to sleep. You can’t exactly tell your boss you need to switch shifts so you can cuddle with your wife, though, so he tucks the thought away. He’s closing the tab.

He texts her good morning about six hours in advance, adding a heart emoji he used to make fun of. She’ll see it when she wakes up, and the thought is warm against sterile lights. Sometimes it’s nice to have people you can send your adoration to; even nicer if they send it back undamaged and wrapped in a chapstick kiss.

Conrad reminds himself that, sometimes, you have to get through the harsh things to reach the mellow ones. He’ll fall asleep with her in the bed some other time, and maybe they’ll be getting better sleep then.

Just have to keep going. Concentrate.

His phone dings 一 _can’t believe you’re practically nocturnal,_ reads the text, along with a picture of Nic smiling in an old college t-shirt. _have a good day!_

 _get some sleep, dork,_ he replies. _love youuuu_

Oh, he misses her. He’ll see her in the afternoon, maybe, when she’s clocking in and he’s driving home to fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon.

He’ll see her soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THAT EPISODE WAS SO GOOD
> 
> No spoilers, but everything inside of me is just !!!! because wow did the writers do a good job


	6. just for kicks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The baby only started kicking a couple days ago, and Nic’s been savoring every little jab. Not to sound foolish, but it’s a cool reminder that this is an actual baby, you know? Not just a pink pregnancy test or a onesie they got for 20% off.

“She could be a soccer player,” Nic murmurs. She’s lying in bed with her shirt pulled up to her chest, her husband’s hand pressed to her bare stomach.

The baby only started kicking a couple days ago, and Nic’s been savoring every little jab. Not to sound foolish, but it’s a cool reminder that this is an actual baby, you know? Not just a pink pregnancy test or a onesie they got for 20% off at Angels-R-Us (seriously, marketing?) but a living, breathing, moving baby with half Nic’s DNA and half of Conrad’s. 

“Um, I still think it’s completely unfair that you can feel her kicking and I can’t,” Conrad pipes up. He’s been waiting to feel her kicks ever since they started, and he’s sitting in wait at the moment; no such luck. Baby girl Nevin-Hawkins won’t kick for anyone but her momma.

“I’m the one with the uterus!”

He shrugs, faking her out.

“I had to give up coffee. And soft cheeses. And alcohol. And sushi!” Nic protests, counting on her fingers. “They just opened up that rotating sushi bar on sixth street last month, and I can’t even go near it! This is my fringe benefit. Can’t you let me enjoy it?”

“Maybe. But the baby’s first kick is exciting, they said. Just wait and you’ll truly feel like a parent, they said. I don’t know what that feels like. Because my own daughter refuses to kick me!”

Nic rolls her eyes, only satisfied on the inside. He’s eager to be a good father. “It’s not that great, I promise you. I woke up at 3 AM with a jab to my guts. And I can kick you on her behalf, if you like.”

“Not the same thing,” Conrad teases, tilts his head up for a kiss.

“Okay.” She moves toward him and her voice goes soft. Oh, he’s a good kisser, always has been. He can make her forget so easily about the things surrounding her. Nic picked a good one.

She deepens the embrace, leaning into him, and Conrad’s hands move up to her hair.

“D’you want to forget about this for now?” he asks, tugging at the hem of her shirt, already pulled up near her ribs.

“Okay.” She cups her hands around his face, flushed against her skin. “Ow!”

Conrad pulls away. “You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” She sighs, hand pressing into the small of her back. “Don’t worry. Just a big kick.”

He groans. “I missed it again?”

“Afraid so.” She nods. “Try talking to her, that might make her respond.”

Conrad splays his hand out over Nic’s stomach again. He gulps. “Hi, kid. It’s Dad here again. Um, we still can’t decide on a good name for you.”

Nic lays back, content to listen only. She loves his voice, quiet like a storm, rolling like waves.

“Nic-” Conrad corrects himself quickly. “ _Mom_ likes old-fashioned names. Clementine or Daisy or Josephine, that kind of stuff. Like fancy 50s actress names, y’know? I guess you don’t really know what an actress is. I’ll teach you. But you should know we’re not a movie household, we prefer television shows.”

“I can’t believe you’re insulting my taste in baby names to our actual baby.”

“Okay, but notice she didn’t kick. She doesn’t wanna be Josephine Nevin-Hawkins. What a scantron nightmare.”

“She has no idea what scantrons are, babe.” Nic smiles, rubbing a hand over her stomach. Admittedly, a name like Josephine might be a little too outdated for a kid growing up in the 2020s. Even referring to the 20s as a decade feels so strange. “Alright, we’ll see if she kicks at any of your weird modern hipster names. Like Olive. Who names their kid that? We’re not chefs, Conrad.”

“It was an innocent suggestion!”

“What’s next, rosemary? Basil? Rotisserie chicken?”

“Hey, Basil Nevin-Hawkins is a great name.” He tries not to laugh.

“Liar. That child would get bullied automatically. Do you wanna be Basil, baby?” No kicks. “She proves my point. This child has great taste.”

“Okay then, we’ll let her decide.” Conrad lies down, presses a kiss to Nic’s stomach.

She’s been showing for about a month now, and it still feels so new that the awe hits him at inconvenient moments. Last week he started tearing up while buying toothpaste because, hello, the kids’ dental section was right there! Kids don’t like mint or cinnamon. Kids want watermelon flavor and cartoon animals drawn on the plastic. Kids sing songs in their heads while they’re brushing their teeth, and kids need to stand on stools to reach the sink, and kids want bedtime stories, and _kids_ use night-lights because they’re sometimes afraid of the dark.

He has a lot to learn.

They need to buy a crib. And one of those dangly mobiles with stars or farm animals or something. Maybe a night-light, too.

“Conrad?”

“Yeah?”

“You went quiet.”

He blinks. “Sorry. I was just pondering. We’re having a baby. And I know I know that already, but you know how you don’t fully know something until it sinks in? That’s ... happening right now.”

Nic smiles. “Been there. You said ‘know’ a little too much, but I, I get it. I go through phases of that myself.”

“Yeah. Just a lot to process.” Conrad exhales, slow. “Maybe baby names aren’t our biggest hurdle?”

She kisses him, then looks down. “Your dad’s still figuring it out. He’ll get there. Isn’t that right, Olive?” Nic kneads her thumb into her stomach, and Conrad takes her hand.

“You’re so judgy,” he murmurs. The baby kicks, a subtle nudge just then, and Conrad laughs. He lays a second hand on his wife’s belly. The sensation washes away. “Hi, kiddo. So let me tell you about this existential crisis I had in the toothpaste aisle, and eventually we can get back to picking out a name for you…”

He’ll be such a good father, Nic thinks, but she lets him enjoy his silence for now. She can always remind him another time. Nic gets every shift, every kick the baby makes. Conrad’s only there to experience a handful of them.

“Hi, kid,” she says, sitting upright in bed. Looking down, she cups a hand around her baby bump. “Speaking of dental-inspired existential crises, you’re really lucky I didn’t break up with your father the morning I realized he used cinnamon toothpaste instead of mint. I considered it for, like, two seconds. Thank goodness, or else you wouldn’t be here. But seriously, I mean, who likes cinnamon?”

“ _I_ do!”

Nic keeps up the baby-talk. “Your dad is wrong. He’s very smart, but he’s wrong about this thing in particular. Mint wins every time.”

“Babies don’t even have teeth when they’re born! Why should they care about toothpaste?”

“I’m the mom, I get to influence our daughter’s opinions.” She kisses him.

"Wait, you considered breaking up with me?"

"Only very briefly."

* * *

“We have a list of names! Alphabetized!”

“But why have a list when you could have a fishbowl?”

“Fishbowls are not organized or laminated,” Nic says, crossing her arms. “You’re gonna get the A-through-L section completely mixed up with the M-through-Z half.”

“It’ll be spontaneous to pick a name out of a bowl and go from there. Alphabetized lists just aren’t spontaneous, babe.” He pecks her cheek. “I promise to blacklist names like Rosemary and Basil.”

“You better.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! I'm just too emotional about these dorks and their future baby (they're going to be such good parents!!!)
> 
> please let me know if you'd like to see more baby-related stories in the future? I like writing them, but I'm not sure if I know enough about babies.
> 
> also happy inauguration day in the U.S!! as happy as I am about the conic baby, rejoining the paris climate accord is also really great.


	7. realize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He looks left and right; too many people around to kiss her. No one’s supposed to know about them dating."

It’s a Thursday afternoon when Nic first thinks she might be in love with Conrad. The clock strikes two, when the fireflies haven’t yet come out and the lights beam off her car in the parking lot, and Conrad rolls out of the on-call room after a nap. His hair’s messy beyond belief, a few wrinkles on his cheek from the pillowcase he left behind. He’s far too endearing when he looks rumpled and young like that.

“Hi,” he murmurs, walking up to the desk.

He looks left and right; too many people around to kiss her. No one’s supposed to know about them dating. Well, aside from Mina (that woman has eyes like an eagle; she knew right away) and Jessica (walked into a supply closet at, um, a bad time. We’ll just leave it at that.)

“Welcome back, sleepyhead,” Nic replies.

“Hey, it was beauty sleep. I could use some.”

“As if you aren’t beautiful enough?” She leans in, raising an eyebrow. Flirting’s more fun when you’re toeing the line.

“Thanks for noticing.” Conrad glances over his shoulder and the hallway’s emptied, so he kisses her then on the cheek. He pulls away and she’s blushing, barely. She touches the skin he kissed with two fingers, basking in that light.

That’s when she knows.

She might like how much taller he is than her, and the lanky way he walks. He can parallel park better than anyone else she knows. He picked out lilies for her last week, just on a whim. But she knows what she loves most - his bittersweetness, his exhaustion, his humanity, his hiddenness.

Later, when they’re at his apartment, Conrad picks up his yellowed legal pad and starts scrawling thoughts for this patient he’s seeing tomorrow. Mystery case.

He murmurs that it’s a VIP for the hospital, so he just _has_ to do well. It’ll be a long night filled with long-buried-away research articles. Goodbye, sleep. Hello, New England Journal of Medicine.

“So, yeah, go ahead and sleep without me, I know you have an early day tomorrow,” he murmurs. The fact that he remembered just reminds her this might be something real.

She loves his midnight laughs, the way his voice sounds when he’s awoken, the movements his hands make when he’s talking about something he half-understands. Nic watches his hands spin around when he’s doodling the double helix of DNA in the margins. So pretty, so simple.

Nic looks at him a little differently when she leaves the room.

They haven’t been dating for that long. It’s going pretty well so far, plenty of dinners on the far side of town where no one from Chastain lives. He’s the best dinner conversation she’s ever had.

He’s also the best sex she’s ever had, she thinks as she bites her lip, but Nic’s only told her sister Jessie because (a) embarrassing and (b) what if she’s not _his_ best and he’s dated someone else that he liked more and then it becomes an actual issue?

Jessie says not to worry about hypotheticals, so Nic tries not to. Deep breaths, four in and four out just like Dr. Segal told her how. Segal’s her therapist. Nic hasn’t told Conrad about her anxiety, but she’s starting to think it wouldn’t be so bad if he knew.

Nic keeps doing her square breathing. Four seconds in.

* * *

They’ve been dating for seven months when, in the middle of making out, when her t-shirt’s been flung across the room and her jeans are at her ankles, Nic mumbles, “I really love you.” She doesn’t know what she meant to say and maybe she meant she really loved this, but she was thinking something more along the lines of ‘keep going’ or ‘faster, don’t stop!’

Freudian slip?

He stops, hands not roaming her skin like they were before. And he’s then laughing. He kisses her hard. “I love you too, even if your timing’s a little weird.”

“I-”

He gives her a pointed look.

“You caught me. I love you,” she says.

“Yeah, you do,” he murmurs, smiling.

“Are we-” she blurts. “Is this for real? Are you all in?” Two birds, one stone, might as well ask him now while they’re being truthful and awkward.

He cracks up. “Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.” Conrad kisses her, runs his hands through her hair. “Um, I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time now.”

“I have, too.”

She’s getting closer to reading his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all, I've decided that conrad is either really good or AWFUL at parallel parking. not sure where this headcanon is even going. Does conrad even have a car???
> 
> second of all -- the new episode (4x04) was so good! I love this show.


	8. hold me in the silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Seeking comfort, she curls into his coat. That’s the instinct of self-preservation kicking in right on time. Not to mention her pain meds._
> 
> Post-4x05 doting, because Conrad is a really good husband and his wife deserves the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi everyone! apparently I love music and fic tied together, so some of the chapters will come with music recs from now on!
> 
> Better Now (Oh Wonder) and Silence (Rene Miller) are such good post-4x05 songs. So much angst and caring. This fic's title also comes from Silence.
> 
> Sidenote, I also have a conic spotify playlist because I'm just that kind of fan -- feel free to check it out! It's called ships passing. find it here: open.spotify.com/playlist/2iBGy0sxgBrxjmxVg73LSw?si=v0qHnn3lQuy8v4yFbxKnzA

Conrad loves her slowly.

“I’m so sorry - I didn’t hear until-”

Nic squeezes his hand. He’s been sitting at her bedside so long, he must be sore, yet he’s still here. “It’s not your fault. You did everything you could.”

“I could have-”

He can think of ten ways to end that sentence. He doesn’t choose any of them.

_I could’ve lost you._

_I could’ve done more._

She’s just lying there in bed, a gash in her side covered in ruddy gauze. Her blood’s still lining the crevices of his fingernails; Conrad could wash it off his skin but it left its mark. He’s used to the sight of blood from the ER, except hers is different somehow. More jarring. It hurts to look at his hands.

“You did it all.” Nic coughs, and Conrad reaches to get her a drink of water. She takes a sip through the straw. “Everything you could, you hear me?”

“I’m just glad you’re okay.” Words are hard to string together. He knows she knows that. Conrad squeezes her hand back, trying to bring her back to good health with nothing more than faith.

“The baby’s okay too.” Nic’s starting to tear up. Conrad wants to wipe away her tears or something. Would that be too visceral, getting too close to her? He hates to fall into the stereotype of treating her like something fragile but-

But he carried her lifeless body up an elevator and into an OR, past the rooms where he asked her on their first date, beyond the office where he used to hide her engagement ring. He grew up here, he’s loved her here. Conrad feels as fragile as he’s ever been, and he presses a kiss to her forehead.

“I’m just gonna-” he gestures to the ultrasound machine next to her bed, only moving an inch or so. “I want to see her again.”

“Wouldn’t mind that either.”

Nic’s weak, and she shakes as she squeezes the cold gel onto her stomach. She hasn’t really started showing yet. Conrad navigates the ultrasound wand on her skin, and he watches his daughter move on the monitor. Her heart rate’s strong, in the 130s, and Conrad doesn’t know her name yet he knows _her,_ every inch.

“We’re gonna be okay,” Nic murmurs, eyes on the black-and-white screen. She reaches for him, as far as she can reach before her IV line threatens to withdraw. The room’s pretty dark ー they can thank the near-shutdown of Chastain for that ー and nothing matters except this. The ultrasound is on, the baby’s heart is beating. It’s all they need.

“She’s - she’s gonna be lovely.” Conrad exhales. There was so much weight on his shoulders today. He doesn’t know what he’d do without her. His gaze travels to his hands, dappled in blood, and he runs his thumb over the ebbs and flows of her wedding ring. The metal’s cool, getting warmer now. “She’ll be intelligent for sure, like you are.”

“And brave. She’ll take after her dad.”

“Funny, I hope.”

“Beautiful, maybe. Beauty doesn’t matter that much.” Nic shivers and gestures for him to stop the ultrasound. She can’t bear to be bare-skinned for long, even if her hospital gown’s only ridden up past her stomach. He wipes the gel off her belly. “If she inherits those brown eyes of yours, she’ll be pretty. They’re so warm, your eyes.”

“Yeah?” Conrad leans over the edge of her bed. He takes off his dingy white coat and lays it across her body.

“Did I ever tell you I liked your eyes?” she says, sleepy. Seeking comfort, she curls into his coat. That’s the instinct of self-preservation kicking in right on time. Not to mention her pain meds.

“Yeah, I remember. It was our seventh date, and you were a little too drunk and let it slip.”

“Oh, right, you were flirting with me ruthlessly at that restaurant.” She smiles, lying back, head nestled against the pillow. “It was, uh, La Traviata. I miss that, going out and drinking. Wish I were there now.” Her eyes fan shut, and she turns onto her side.

“I bet you do.” They haven’t gone for drinks since the honeymoon, which … well, that combination of inebriation and new marriage may have led to the pregnancy in the first place.

“After the day I’ve had? Absolutely, I want a glass of wine.” Nic yawns. “Goodnight, honey.”

It’s five in the afternoon, technically, but Conrad draws back. What can he say? Those painkillers can be strong.

He lays a kiss to her temple. He makes a note to run home for a change of clothes and some blankets for her. Probably snacks too; she’s been going through peanut M&Ms like crazy lately. She says it’s the pregnancy, except that’s also just Nic being Nic.

“I love you. You too, baby Nevin.” He runs his hand over her stomach.

Nic snores a little bit in her sleep, and Conrad backs out of the room as quietly as he can.

“Well, baby Nevin-Hawkins,” he corrects himself.

God, he’s lucky.

Conrad leaves her slowly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUYS. THIS SHOW. Amy Holden Jones, I love you a lot. Thank you for writing and creating The Resident.
> 
> also, for fluff's sake, please imagine conrad and nic watching movies in her hospital bed and talking to their baby while sharing peanut m&ms.


	9. requiems

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is it weird to have such a scrapbook memory of my mother?”
> 
> “You loved her. Of course you remember the little things.”
> 
> [trigger warning: parental death, cemeteries]

They’re quiet as the car’s tires sink into the mud. Conrad told her it was a winding path, black-wet-dying autumn leaves raked out of obligation rather than promise, and they should’ve figured that something would go wrong. They’ll pull the car out of the mud on the way home. They’ll deal with it later.

Nic takes Conrad’s hand on the short route through the field. He knows the way. His legs brush against gold-green foliage on the path, and he tosses a river rock into the meager pond (more like an optimistic puddle, honestly) before he reaches his destination.

“Do you do that every time?” she asks.

“What?”

“Skipping stones.”

He nods. “Dad taught me how. Mom taught Dad.” Conrad’s breaths grow heavier during the last few minutes of the walk. Grass clippings decorate the wet edges of his shoes. He mutters something about the sprinkler system being used too liberally. The management ought to listen, but it won’t. He checked a couple months ago.

He falls quiet.

“Hi, Mom,” he says, stepping up to her gravestone. His shadow falls across it, diagonal, dark. “Um - this is the, uh, the girl I told you I was gonna marry.”

Nic agreed to marry him a month ago. Conrad must’ve come to the graveyard before the proposal, too.

Nic doesn’t know how to say anything. There isn’t a hand to shake. Her mother had her ashes spread; Nic feels her mom in the air, in the trees, in birdsong. At a cemetery, she has no etiquette to fall back on.

Mother, wife, and friend to all, the stone reads.

 _Okay, say something. Say anything. You can talk to a friend,_ Nic thinks.

“I - I’m sorry we never met.” Deep breath now. “But I love your son, you should know. I’ve loved him for a long time. I like to think he got all his good traits from you.”

“She _did_ like it when people insinuated I was more like her than my father. Good move.” Conrad kneels and brushes leaves and dust from her grave. He catches Nic’s eye, well aware that she’s out of her comfort zone. “You’re kinda like her, too.”

“How so?”

“Glass of wine after a long day? Insistence upon keeping the grocery store receipts? A Hawkins move if I ever saw one.” Conrad smiles softly. This is a somber place, not meant for anything more than a spark of joy. “She was one of those hands-on moms. We used to make play-doh because it was more fun than getting it store-bought. And she scrapbooked everything we did. She wouldn’t go a day without pulling out the Polaroid.”

“I’d like to see those photos sometime. I’ll bet you were a cute eight-year-old.”

“Oh, the cutest. Crooked front teeth, sandy-blonde hair, all of it.” Conrad’s standing still, knees locked. He squeezes Nic’s hand. “I know it might be a little uncomfortable meeting her like this.”

“No, I understand.” Conrad’s met her mother too, but only through home movies or a prayer sent to a cloudy sky. Nothing permanent. It’s a routine part of the heartbreak. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

“You’re family.” He presses a kiss to her temple. “Of course I’d bring you here.” He fidgets on the neatly cropped lawn, trying to shake off the grass clippings.

“Come on. We can take a walk around the grounds, and you can tell me more about her.” Nic doesn’t know if she’s overstepping her bounds; she doesn’t know how to speak to a grave. Conrad follows her easily.

She was from Atlanta, he says. Born there. She worked part-time as a receptionist on the fourth floor of a bank, and kept rice krispies in her drawer so Conrad would have snacks if he stayed there after school. She got a speeding ticket once, racing to pick him up from baseball practice. She managed to get there seven minutes late after talking her way out of it.

She hated James Bond movies with a passion; they weren't feminist and she knew it. She never learned how to ride a bike. She firmly maintained that everyone should write inside the margins of their books; to read a book and refrain from marking it would be like owning a violin you didn’t play. (She was also an _awful_ violin player, but that didn’t stop her from attending lessons once a week. The neighbors would complain, and she’d roll her eyes and pick up the sheet music as soon as they’d shut the door.)

She used to watch reruns of ER when she was sick, and she’d invite Conrad to sit in her bed and play with his Legos as they watched together. They used to gossip about all the breakups at the hospital. He remembers enjoying the surgery scenes.

She liked iced tea. She knew how to knit scarves but nothing else, and whenever she attempted hats or quilts or potholders they’d just turn out as hat or quilt or potholder-length scarves. She had a pet clownfish before it was cool, before Finding Nemo came out in theaters. She tried to grow avocados in her backyard, but it never worked; Atlanta lacked the right climate. She liked to weave daisy chains out of throwaway dandelions. She kept trying to grow avocados all the while.

She accepted hugs as Mother’s Day gifts. She bit her lip and did the crossword puzzle every night over a cup of coffee; she’d drink it decaf. She collected snow globes. She used to pick out Marshall’s ties in the morning, and, after failing to convince him to wear the ugly polka-dot one, she’d go for blue or green. Something natural. It’d be the closest thing those businessmen got to the outside world all day, she’d joke, head thrown back as she laughed.

She laughed a lot.

“Is it weird to have such a scrapbook memory of my mother?”

“You loved her. Of course you remember the little things.” Nic links her arm in Conrad’s. “Do you have one of those lists for me?”

Spontaneously, he lets it drop from his lips on the drive home. It wasn’t too hard to pull the car from the mud after all.

> Nic Nevin, thirty-five. ‘Learn to play ukulele’ is on her bucket list, but that’s really because she wants to learn guitar and thinks they’re too expensive, so a ukulele is a cheap alternative. Has recurring dreams about learning how to fly a plane. Kicks in her sleep. Really bad at French-braiding her hair. Good at French, though; she took it all through high school and did study abroad there for a semester. She’s a good French-kisser, too, he adds with a smirk.
> 
> If you buy her a bag of yogurt pretzels, they’ll be gone in a good two hours. If you send her a postcard, she’ll keep it in the closet, inside a hatbox straight from the 1950s. If you tell her a secret, she won’t tell a soul.
> 
> Nic Nevin. Collects those flattened pennies from museum vending machines. Believes in aliens and totally had a Star Trek phase in high school. Cries at weddings: real, televised, it doesn’t matter. Thinks lingerie is way too overpriced, but also kinda worth it.

“It’s true!” she defends.

“So would you argue that being ‘worth it’ would mean it’s not overpriced?”

“I-” she weaves words together messily, like a tapestry not anchored to anything. “I think it’s worth the price, but that doesn’t mean it also doesn’t cost too much. Insulin is also worth the price, but it shouldn’t have to be that expensive.” She pauses. “Ignore my false equivalences. I’m shutting up now.”

He kisses her, then goes on. “You’d look good in anything, I should remind you. Even the trekkie shirts you can’t bear to throw out.”

> Nic Nevin. Really loves jigsaw puzzles, like to the point of sitting mesmerized in a chair for six hours, ignoring the calls of hunger and thirst. Has loopy cursive handwriting like a font. Prefers taking baths to showers. Scared of grasshoppers and moths because they move too suddenly. Secretly loves horror movies.

She feels warm under the light of his attention. “Thank you for saying all that.”

“Of course, I like your idiosyncrasies. And my mom would’ve loved you, y’know.” Conrad kicks his shoes off at the front door. “She was a lot like you, had a lot of the same quirks.”

“Aside from the wine-drinking and the fact that we both love you?”

“Oh, yeah. She was terrified of bugs, moths especially. You could’ve formed a very tight-knit support group.”

“It’s a real fear!”

“I’m sure you would’ve met the moth lady’s very cute son and hit it off eventually.” He shrugs, then blinks back some hidden weight. He sighs, head thrown back a little. “She was the type to tell a lot of jokes. Sorry if I’m telling too many.”

“You take after her.” Nic cups his cheek, kissing him. “It’s natural. Just like flinching at grasshoppers.”

He rolls his eyes. “Nerd.”

“I collect flattened museum pennies as a hobby! You knew what you were getting into when you proposed to me.”

* * *

Conrad Hawkins, thirty-six. Has a hard time letting his guard down. Thinks powdered sugar is completely unnecessary on already-sugary pancakes. Doesn’t believe in horoscopes. For some reason, he reads them anyways. Used to have a pet hermit crab. Drinks his coffee with milk. Has a scattered music taste, indie and rock and violin solos. Bad at playing pool.

Smiles at commercials with babies in them. Introvert. Night owl. Typical doctor; messy handwriting, slanted and tall. He writes ‘y’ and ‘g’ in no-nonsense ways, not curling the tips, keeping them rod-straight. Owns a record player but not enough records. Hates those ‘I’m famous and I got a book deal!’ books. Definitely more of a dog person. Can’t believe jeggings were ever a real thing.

Goes through sticky notes quickly, littering the fridge with see-you-soon notes and grocery lists. Loves Sharpies. Runs when he can’t sleep. Good at cooking, even if it’s just leftovers thrown together in a pot. Thinks Die Hard is overrated. James Bond is, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is partially inspired by my mom, who is lovely and amazing and once got a speeding ticket trying to pick me up from my dad's office. (also, making your own play-dough is pretty fun. would recommend.)
> 
> I don't know, I guess I just wanted to write something bittersweet about parents and memories. I'm really lucky that I haven't lost many loved ones and I still have my parents with me, but losing people is hard and I wanted to remember Conrad's mom, too? I like making lists (like in the fic) about myself and other people and fictional characters -- little stuff, fortune-cookie-slip memories, so I imagined her like one of those fun, carefree moms. The kind who'd show up to show & tell and clap really loudly during spelling bees.


	10. the one that got away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I wanted to hear about Catherine, that’s all. I think I should know about her if I’m gonna be,” Nic bites back her stubborn innocence, “...your wife?”
> 
> This story is set before they get engaged! In which Conrad and Nic talk about his past with Catherine and their future (KIDS. Because nothing is more romantic than people in love excitedly planning to be amazing parents someday.)
> 
> TW: brief discussions of grief and parental loss

“What was it like, nearly marrying Catherine?” Nic asks, her gaze crossing over Conrad’s face like a shadow. They’re lying in bed after a twelve-hour shift, muscles sore and arms entwined.

“I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she supplies, giving him some benefit of the doubt. They’re not even engaged and yet she’s been itching to ask, wondering how he went from Catherine’s fiancé to nothing overnight. The night of that rehearsal dinner.

“Where’s this coming from?” Conrad says, tone soft. He can talk about it now. Six months of therapy does an awful lot of good in breaking down those walls.

“I’ve never been engaged.” Nic blurts. Probably not the best way to approach the situation, she thinks with a gnash of her teeth. “Not that, like, I’m putting pressure on you or anything-” They’ve talked about marriage, yet never set a date or anything solid. They’ve only recently agreed to move in together.

Great. Now it’ll look like she’s angling for a proposal.

Nic sighs. “I was merely wondering. ‘Cause you were engaged to someone before me, and I, uh, haven’t had anything quite so serious before. My longest relationship has been you.” She takes his hand to imply ‘and I want it to keep being you’ instead of ‘apologies for springing this on you and I know you should never talk about exes in the bedroom BUT it’s been a while since we discussed the woman you nearly married before you met me?’

That’s a lot of pressure to put on a gesture.

“Oh. Okay.” Conrad turns to face her. “So you just want to know more about her?”

“I do.”

“Um, I proposed in the backyard of her trailer. That’s where she lived with her mom and her siblings. There was this forest we’d walk through, and I carved our initials into a tree. We were like seventeen, eighteen,” he wobbles his left hand, the one that Nic _isn’t_ squeezing like a stress toy. “Right on the cusp of being able to get married in the first place. And she said yes ‘cause I was going into the Marines and … well, she didn’t know if I was gonna come back.”

“So it was a shotgun wedding,” Conrad continues. He looks Nic in the eye to make sure she’s alright with this. “We were going to the courthouse and, a few days before, had a ‘rehearsal dinner’ with my parents and hers. My, uh, my mom gave me the ring to give to her. She liked Cath just fine. My dad was the one who caused the scene - we were really young and he didn’t want me getting married - and we fought, and that was that. Catherine gave me back the ring, we cancelled all the paperwork, and everyone knew we broke up but not why.”

It’s very odd, thinking of her boyfriend as a teenager with a whole other life. Thinking of eighteen-year-old Conrad getting ready to marry someone ー Nic’s thirty-two, she still isn’t quite ready for a commitment like that. Conrad’s always been the risk-taker, though. He’s the type to jump in headfirst.

“How old were you when you met?”

“Fourteen. It was freshman orientation, Miss Fisher’s class.” He swallows. “Are you trying to ask me something in particular?”.

“No, I guess - I guess I had questions about what your relationship was like. What she was like. I mean, if I’d had a serious relationship before you, wouldn’t you want to know?”

“I guess so,” Conrad shrugs. “I never saw it that way before. Your exes just aren’t that interesting.”

“Hey!”

“You dated Brad the model-airplane collector for three months,” he deadpans.

“Well, he wasn’t that bad, everyone collects something!” Nic defends. “Yeah, he was dull. He used to go to the airport and look at the planes to try and,” with air quotes, “ _find a rare one._ He had a notebook where he kept their serial numbers.”

“This guy could’ve made a decent living selling those calm-voice sleep therapy tapes they sell at the pharmacy.”

“Okay, okay, enough about my ex.” Nic shoves him playfully. “What was Catherine like? Was she like me?”

“Yeah, kinda. She was driven like you are. The oldest girl in her family, too, so she’d waitress and collect tips to pay for their books. She used to slip notes in my locker when I wasn’t looking, the same way you leave me post-it notes in the kitchen-” Oh, great, she’s giving him a weird look. “Is this too personal?”

“No, it’s good! I’m not jealous. She’s married, she has a _baby_ , for heaven’s sake. I’m only curious about who you used to be.” Nic curls into his side. The birth announcement’s pinned to their refrigerator with a Georgia peach magnet. “That’s all there is.”

* * *

“Baby Will is so cute, I swear,” Nic gushes as she holds the photo Catherine and her husband mailed to their house. “I want to pinch his cheeks so bad.”

“I know! He’s so big already, too,” Conrad says.

“I bet our kids would be just as fat and happy.” The words are a little foreign in her mouth, but safe, warm. 

“Fatter, though.” He kisses Nic on the forehead as he stands up from the kitchen table, hovering over her. “Happier. If that’s possible.”

“I think it might be.”

“Yeah. Someday.” His voice lingers past the words themselves, and his hands rest on her shoulders. “We’d make cute babies, y’know.”

“Ugh, they’d be adorable. Good with stethoscopes, too.”

He laughs lightly. “Our own little Florence Nightingale, maybe?”

Oh, she loves him for bringing up a famous nurse rather than a doctor.

She loves him for giving her space to walk around the full circumference of her thoughts, she loves him for leaving her the last bagel in the fridge this morning, she loves his quiet, his kindness; she loves him for wanting to marry her despite the cracks in her armor. That wedding is an inevitable glory wrapped up in a calendar from next next year or maybe even next year, if Nic can call her accountant and get over her irrational fear of dying and leaving him a widower with a baby to remind him of Mom.

_Mom._

And Nic’s thirteen again, sitting with Jessie in a black dress.

Except no, she’s thirty-two and in love, grieving the mother and sister that gave her a lifetime of gifts with what few years they had.

That process isn’t purely grey. Grief disguises itself often, and grief stings and lights you up, and you can celebrate a good moment even during a bad day. A good day during a bad year.

Nic grabs him and hugs him so tight, her chest is practically glued to his. For a second she can’t breathe, and then the air is clean in her lungs again. “Clara Barton. I like the name Claire.” She crumples into him like a leaf folded into a palm. 

“Alright.”

There are paragraphs she isn’t saying. Conrad reads between the lines she’s drawing in the sand. “You would make a really good mom, for what it’s worth.” He strokes her back over and over.

“Thank you.” She says it sadly, hoping that he doesn’t take it that way. They’re still hugging when she starts to cry into the flannel of his shirt, spots of saltwater turning the red fabric darker.

* * *

“Nic?”

_I have to talk to my accountant. What if Conrad asks me to marry him tomorrow and I shoot him down because I didn’t have my bank statements organized chronologically and I really needed to file those before I got engaged?_

It’s impulsive, she knows, but the world’s much more colorful when you take a step back and let lunacy eclipse whatever logic you have.

“Nic. Honey.”

She’s staring at him now. Great, now she’s been staring too long. Now’s probably a good time to interrupt this no-brakes train of thought. “We were - uh, we were talking about Catherine. Your ex.”

“Did I do something wrong? You sorta zoned out.”

She grits her teeth, ‘sorta’ is putting it lightly for sure. “I was, um, thinking about my future. With you. You and the to-be-conceived-later children that may or may not be getting a college fund pretty soon? If my accountant gets back to me?”

She means _conceived later_ as in _don’t freak out, I’m not pregnant_ , except Conrad just starts laughing. “Okay, okay, sorry! I was just worried I scared you. You’re doing that ‘I need to accomplish it all right now’ thing again.”

“You didn’t scare me. I wanted to hear about Catherine, that’s all. I think I should know about her if I’m gonna be,” Nic bites back her stubborn innocence, “...your wife?”

Again with stumbling over words. She’s really gotta work on that.

“And the mother of my not-yet-conceived children. Don’t forget that one.” Conrad kisses her across a canvas of bedsheets. “We can work on the baby-making some other time. Seriously, though, college accounts?”

“My accountant and I really like to plan ahead,” she mumbles. “Don’t be surprised if you get an email from her asking you about your assets.”

“You want to have my babies.”

She blushes, defensive over nothing. “So?”

“You want to have blonde, college-educated babies with me.” They’d already discussed having children in the past, and yet this is different somehow. Every time they talk about kids, another hurdle is leapt over.

“You’re barely blonde!”

“That’s not the point. You wanna have kids with me.” Conrad announces it like he’s won a blue ribbon at the county fair. “You want to raise them in a good school district and send ‘em off to Emory University.”

“So what if I do?”

“You’re, in fact, so prepared to have my children that your _accountant_ knows about your college-sendoff, empty-nester plans.” He kind of wants to marry her on the spot.

Nic doesn’t know whether to hug him or slap him for taking such delight in what, to her, is an ordinary truth wrapped in financial jargon. She feels a wave of goosebumps walk down her arm. “I hate you for reading into me sometimes.” That’s code for ‘lighten up on the ribbing before you crack a rib laughing at me,’ and he knows it.

“I think about it too, you know. A lot.” He gives her the thought like an heirloom, passed down over generations, to make sure she knows he’s ready. “We could have two kids, maybe two years apart or so. I could take time off once I finish my residency. Not, like, a full year’s leave. Although I could work part-time and you could work part-time and we’d swing by daycare to see baby Claire or Henry or ...Kyle?”

Nic purses her lips.

“Alright, so that’s a no on naming the baby after your dad. I figured as much. ” Conrad traces circles into her palm with the pad of his thumb. “Jess and Irving could be godparents. Or Mina and AJ. After maternity leave, we’d switch shifts working and taking care of the baby. Lighter hours, tag-teaming it. I could even coach soccer when they’re older.” He shrugs. “If I ever figure out the rules of elementary school soccer, then I could coach.”

“You? The team doctor for Georgia FC?”

“Oh, yeah, like the doctor’s ever gonna be asked about regulations and yellow cards.” He rolls his eyes and Nic merely smiles. She doesn’t deserve someone who brings her this much joy.

(She does. She’ll take that concept in stride later on.)

“You’ll be a good coach. I can bring pretzels and juice boxes to the games.”

She loves him for thinking everything through.

She loves him for being excited to be a father.

“Hey, listen, babe.” Conrad slows his breaths. “Sorry I was caught off guard when you asked about Cath earlier.” It’s a little odd to feel her nickname roll off his tongue after locking that memory away years ago. “I guess I just don’t think of her as my ex, in a weird way? Even if our breakup was bad, we mended it without leaving a real scar. I see her more as an old friend, before Afghanistan or med school. And I imagine her as happy as I am with you. She married someone who fit her better than I ever did, and I-”

There’s a glint in her eye that no star could match.

“And, apparently, I’m gonna have a wife and two kids with _very_ well-set-up college funds.”

Nic kisses him, hand cupping his cheek, trying to ingrain every last bit of ‘I want this, I want you’ into the embrace. “So you weren’t weirded out?”

“A little. Tried not to let it show.” Conrad knocks his shoulder against hers.

Oh, he’s weak for the way Nic asks him questions he’s forgotten to bring up. She’ll leave foggy mirror hearts for him to see when he’s in the shower, and half the time she slips off her clothes and joins him. He loved Catherine, he did, and yet he loves Nic more. It isn’t teenage feet-on-the-dashboard love, but the type you drive home and tuck into bed.

“I’ll be sure to look out for that email from your accountant, by the way.”

“I’ll let Julie know.” She says, still a little blushy.

Huh.

Julia Nevin-Hawkins. Potential baby name.

* * *

“Brad?” Catherine calls from inside the house, sitting by a pile of open mail.

Her husband strolls over, leaving a half-glued model helicopter on the workbench in the garage. “Yeah, what is it?”

“Birth announcement. Conrad’s daughter.” She waves it in the air to get his attention.

“She’s real cute, isn’t she?”

“Such a chubby face. Makes me long for the days when Will was a baby,” Catherine says, which is only partially true.

The terrible twos aren’t truly that bad, and he’s starting to get the handle of full sentences now, which is a thrill in and of itself. Yesterday Will asked her for animal crackers (well, he wanted a _nimma,_ although she can translate that language like no one else.)

* * *

“Okay, Ellie,” Conrad says, bouncing her up and down on his knee. “Mom’s finally asleep. Now it’s your turn. We’re gonna figure this out all on our own, alright? We got this.”

She doesn’t nod; she’s only a few weeks old.

“Sounds good. Now, we have lullabies, or this dangly mobile thing of the solar system because girls absolutely belong in STEM and it’s important to start educating your daughters about science early-”

Ellie starts fussing in his arms, and Conrad reaches for her pacifier on the coffee table. “Okay, okay, shhhh… so you’re not a fan of science, maybe you’re a,” he sighs, “a liberal arts person. I’ll try not to judge. You _are_ my daughter, after all. I’m gonna love you no matter what.”

She starts sucking on the pacifier. Conrad rocks her back and forth in his arms.

“And, anyways, the arts are important too. Even the fine arts! It’s hard to make a living as a musician or an actor or something. I’m sure you could make it, though. You could also be a historian or a professor. You could write journal articles like the ones Uncle Devon always brags about at fundraisers. _Just another JAMA publication, no sweat. It practically wrote itself!”_

Ellie still hasn’t started dozing off. She reaches up hazily, wrapping her hand around Conrad’s index finger.

“Okay, baby. You’re just gonna be stubborn. Runs in the family, I’m sure my mom and Nic’s had a fit trying to put us down as babies.” He keeps rocking her, hoping to lull her into a state of calm. She’s so cute, he swears. Ellie might be even prettier than Nic (if that’s humanly possible.)

Conrad makes a funny face. She doesn’t react, sucking on her pacifier without a care in the world. He rolls his eyes.

“Baby girl, someday you’re gonna wish you had an extra twelve hours to sleep and do nothing, and I’ll be there reminding you that you wasted it when you were a month old.” Conrad leans in and nuzzles his nose against Ellie’s. Ugh, her skin is perfect. Dermatologists must hate her. “Listen, there’s no such thing as wasting time with people you love, anyhow. Even if they refuse to go to bed after a long day of naps and applesauce. Every moment with you has been good.”

Her eyelids grow a little heavy.

“I’ll try not to be offended that you got sleepy right when I told you just how valuable you are to me.”

He loves his daughter. He loves her so much he can’t contain it all, and the adoration bursts out at inopportune moments. Those waiters at Trina’s Taqueria don’t really _need_ to see baby pictures, but Conrad’s showing them off anyhow. “Well, that’s just the way things are sometimes. Sleep’s important. You gotta consolidate those memories.”

It isn’t exactly a cool thing to say. He’s a dad now and dads aren’t known for their quality humor, so he lets it slide.

When Conrad finally slips upstairs and into bed with Nic, already fast asleep, he kisses her forehead. He’ll tell her about tonight’s achievements in the morning. For now, he has sixteen hours’ worth of energy to recover.

He’ll see them tomorrow.

He can’t wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nic absolutely leaves conrad sticky-note love letters in the kitchen covered in hearts and smiley faces (which is inspired by lucky people by waterparks, the most romantic song ever. 10/10 would recommend if you want to hear sappy lines like "you've got me more than clumsy.")
> 
> "we would make pretty babies" is 100% taken from grey's anatomy, because it's been 8 years and I still love that show
> 
> So, with this chapter, I've officially written over 200k words on ao3!! What a lovely milestone. I love writing for this fandom, hopefully I'll be able to keep it up for a while :))
> 
> and, of course, this story was created to (A) bring up adorable feelings of "we would be good parents someday" and (B) fulfill a prompt left in the comments! but also (C) address the very important side characters of catherine, brad the airplane guy, and nic's accountant

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! comments and kudos are so appreciated, and I'm always open for requests if you have any.


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